Martin Atkins puts the current state of the music industry into perspective, sharing wisdomisms such as “you’ve got to think outside the box”, “where’s the fucking box?”, and “I build my own boxes”. The veteran drummer credited by NIN, Ministry, and Killing Joke, among others, has published a comprehensive guide slated to put an end to touring stupid. Tour Smart (available on Amazon) is out and Martin has been unleashed on a new generation of artists living in a box and staring at the pretty wallpaper. The scope and scale of this publication covers every aspect of the music ecosystem, from where to pour your gasoline to health & safety practices [when pouring gasoline]. The man has a plan and if you don’t follow it, you’re fucked.
On the NPR blog, I stumbled upon a two week old post marking the annual Beatbox Battle World Championship held in Berlin. NPR featured the competition’s wildcard winner, 17 year old Julia Dales from Canada, and I think the young beatboxerererer deserves a bit of the sp-sp-sp-sp-spotlight. Sorry.
Updating fans after a gig with photos of the night, providing them with screenshots of album artwork prior to a new release, and adding on-the-fly visuals to a streaming track can boost your engagement with your audience… if you can do all that quickly, easily and preferably for free.
With that in mind, I searched for a tool that will allow me to create a short clip in under a minute (not including upload and render time which doesn’t count because I can do other things while I’m waiting) that’s more compelling than a slideshow and less cumbersome than a video. With Animoto, I export my images from Flickr, MySpace, Facebook etc. (or upload directly from my desktop), put the images in order, add text, and upload my soundtrack. Animoto will ‘animate’ the image sequence to match the musical qualities of my track, render the video, and provide me with a variety of options to post or share the finished clip with my friends, fans and family. It’s a three step process. A 30 second sequence is free and literally takes a minute to do.
As soon as you get off the stage, use Animoto to create and a send a quick audiovisual cut so the folks that attended the gig have something to look at (and remember you by) when they get home. You can get pretty creative without the skill-set or labor attributed to video recording and editing.
I explored the stop motion phenomenon a little further this morning. Straying from the content norm of this blog, I put together five clips I love which, I believe, compliment the tremendously viral stop motion music videos I posted in the past. Hope you enjoy.
Just discovered a quirky new site for music and music video discovery called YouMusic. Under the strapline, Make Music? Find Fans! Love Music?Find Talent!, the site crowd sources its content from artists and allows music consumers to rate what they hear and see. There’s a music chart, gig schedule, contest and other community and artist opportunity bells and whistles. I wonder how much the YouMusic.com domain is worth?
ArtistForce, an online CRM solution and marketplace for the entertainment industry, made a controversial appearance at SXSW with a racy promotional campaign involving a hot blonde in a liquid latex sheath passing out flyers with “Thousands of artists get screwed every day. Protect yourself with ArtistForce.com” printed on them and attached with complimentary condoms.
Founded in 2006, ArtistForce provides an online environment for entertainment industry professionals and talent to conduct negotiations directly, manage their business administration, track activities, and more, through proprietary technology applications and consultation services.
Stop motion video editing is popular on YouTube. I first got sight of its viral potential when young Lasse Gjertsen uploaded his outrageous piano and drum montage:
More recently, Oren Lavie enjoyed tremendous success beyond his YouTube exposure with a beautifully conceived yet shoe-string budgeted piece:
Yesterday, I discovered a symphony of YouTube clips that, collectively, sound quite amazing and reflect the exciting prospects of remixing previously published and shared content:
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